Thursday, April 4, 2013

The first draft of Pages is finished, and now I'm in the editing phase. Some of it (even the stuff I like) has to go, and the characters have evolved and sometimes morphed into a different character altogether. A few characters that started out as bit-players are walking to center stage in the final. Somewhere in the story, they must have touched a chord in me and in doing so — have become more important to the story.

This is certainly true of the psychiatrist - Dr. Lieberman. He started out as somewhat insignificant but I grew to like him. Why? Because he was different and complicated. Here's a glimpse at him:

Not what I expected. Hearing about all the books he'd written, and his world-renowned status as an expert in regression therapy, I expected a tall dapper professor type in a three piece suit. That wasn't Dr. Lieberman. What I saw was a pencil-thin man in his late sixties wearing a wrinkled gray suit holding up his "wait a minute" finger as he fumbled through an avalanche of loose papers. His wide beat-up wooden desk was filled with unwashed coffee cups, un-filed notebooks, and empty candy wrappers.

I suppose this is true in "real life" too -- someone that you thought was somewhat insignificant in your life grabbed you in some way and changed how you saw that person — and perhaps how you saw yourself.